Savage Distractions (The Love is Murder Social Club Book 3)

by Talia Maxwell

  But: Lucia didn’t call her brother.

  If she’d wanted the child to go to him, she would’ve called him.

  Annie motioned for the pilot to wait; Josh stood and watched the entire scene unfold, eager perhaps for the story.

  “What friend did your sister call?”

  “What?” Vincent asked, confused.

  “When she gave up her position here in Oregon…what friend did she call?”

  “Oh, yeah,” he stumbled and even though he was going to say a name, Annie knew he was lying. Why didn’t he want her to know the woman’s real name? “Rachel.”

  Annie turned to the pilot. “I’m the only one going. I’ll report back.”

  “Wait a second—”

  “Maybe your sister didn’t want you to find her kid,” Annie said with a tone that made all three of the men take a step back. “You better care more about keeping your nephew safe than finding him and taking him home. You understand me?”

  Vincent was seething; he could physically intimidate her if he wanted, but he kept his body in check. She knew it might be irresponsible to go on a helicopter ride over to one of the most dangerous places on the coast, but she also didn’t think there was a better option. The lighthouse took more lives than it saved before it was decommissioned and she knew the stories of it being used as a mausoleum were true. Terrible Tilly, indeed.

  “Keep each other company,” Annie instructed Josh and Vincent while she rushed off to the helicopter.

  Not many people could claim to have visited the rock and Annie felt flush with excitement as she skipped down the sand to the waiting ride, the pilot slipping her headphones; she was feeling more comfortable than before.

  “This might be a rough landing,” the pilot’s voice said over the headset.

  “I’m ready,” Annie said back.

  “And there could be swells.”

  She looked down at her heels and sighed, slinging them off and leaving them on the floor of the chopper. As they neared the lighthouse, the wind picked up and Annie’s heart beat faster. Straight down, the waves crashing up against the rocks—the sound of it louder than anything she’d ever heard. With a tilt and a bump, bump, bump, Josh’s pilot landed the helicopter on the small square patch of cement. It was covered in moss and bird shit and Annie, barefoot, walked delicately through the soggy landing pad and up the stone steps to the old lighthouse tower.

  The pilot, her dad’s age, maybe a bit younger, was at her back, warning her about loose stone and strong winds. Annie knew the stories of the lighthouse; the men swept out to sea—the family that went crazy and begged to be relieved of their post. Annie wandered all the way to the tip of the glass where the lantern used to burn. Through the fog and rolling tide, she could see the beach and the tiny dots of houses along the beach. Everything looked so small, so destructible, from that vantage point.

  “Wind is picking up,” the pilot said. “If you’re looking for a message, probably not up this way.” He offered her a hand and she took it, aware of how slippery her feet felt against the rusted steel steps.

  Annie breathed and put her hands on her knees when she reached the bottom of the steps again. “Well then,” she said, looking at the man. “If I was looking for a message, where should I look?”

  “Josh said you wanted to see the mausoleum.”

  “You know where that is?” Annie asked, squinting at the man. She reached into her pocket; her cell phone didn’t get any service on the rock. She almost laughed at how much trouble she was going to get into from her friends when she confessed hopping a helicopter to Terrible Tilly without telling anyone.

  “Used to run tours out here for the owners before the state bankrupted them.”

  “Who’s them?” Annie asked. They descended a ladder and Annie listened to the awakened marine life.

  “The owners of the Viking Burial Tours. The people who own the rock and the lighthouse.”

  “They own it still?”

  “Yup.”

  “They have a name?” Annie asked.

  The pilot didn’t answer. He pushed open a metal door and pulled a mag-light off a utility belt, shining it into abandoned sleeping quarters made of stone. Little slivers of light cascaded from the windows high above the floor were made by the light of the moon, and Annie walked over to them, in awe.

  “What is this place?” she asked, her voice a giant echo.

  “Where the family who kept the lighthouse stayed.”

  “It looks like a prison,” she whispered, her voice still loud.

  “It was,” he answered. The man shivered. “There are urns and coffins in the back part and a log book under the bunk in the side bedroom.”

  “You’re telling me this because you’re not going in there?” Annie asked.

  The pilot shook his head and threw his mag-light to her. He pulled out a smaller flashlight and bid her good luck. “Gives me the creeps. I’ll warm up the blades.”

  “You superstitious?” Annie asked, her heart racing and her nerve slipping. She’d once read that if the locals were scared, be scared. She was a local, but that guy knew the rock and the lighthouse and he had no desire to walk into the crypt with her.

  “Never minded the rides here,” the man said, “but there sure is something about disturbing the dead.”

  “I’m just looking for a clue,” she tried to rationalize, but he was already waving her away. She turned and took a tentative step toward the sealed metal doors in front of her leading to the back part of the barracks.

  The pilot retreated back up the ladder to the helicopter and Annie took a deep breath, slowly repeating out loud to herself a sing-song mantra of bravery. “Just ashes and coffins. Nothing sinister. Only dark. You’re fine. You’re totally fine.” But without a working cell phone, Annie didn’t feel fine.

  She pushed on the back metal door with her foot and the door easily clanged open. Annie scanned the flashlight over dust and nothingness, and as she stepped into the dark, she heard the helicopter roar above her and grow louder and then softer as if drifting away.

  Abandoning her mission, Annie ran after the sound and rushed out into the cold cement slab without shoes in time to see her ride off the island disappear into the fast approaching clouds.

  A storm was coming and she’d been left on Terrible Tilly alone.

  Annie stepped back into the barracks, her breathing heavy and deep, her eyes focused as she tried to figure out a plan. A wave crashed against the rock and the spray created an arc around the stone steps.

  “Shit,” Annie breathed. But she didn’t have time to panic. Josh and Vincent knew she was here—and she still had to find out if Lucia or Missy left a message. “I’m sorry, friends. Love ya. I’m exploring a crypt all by myself…there’s no rule against it.”

  With a deep breath, the storm raging off the coast, the wind a portend of things to come, Annie kicked open the door once again and cast her flashlight into the darkened abyss.

  “Alright ghosts,” she called into the darkness. The deepness of her voice rattled back at her. “Time to prove you’re friendly. I’m looking for a boy.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Peggy was conveniently out of the office after running his mock draft as truth and then expecting two more columns from him. He blew up her phone with texts and messages, but she hadn’t replied, and he knew that somehow she would find a loophole that granted her that version of his story.

  It wasn’t true.

  And when Annie read it—when she saw herself characterized as Lucy the Lawyer—she was gone. The best thing in his life had vacated the hotel room they’d shared in record time. Benson was impressed with how fast she took off. Even the valet said her car was gone.

  Sure, it had been one of her most endearing early qualities: when she knew what she wanted she didn’t wait around. But he wished she’d waited around long enough to hear that he hadn’t betrayed her—no one had ever meant to read that.

  Nolan met him in the lobby.


  “Dude,” he said and whistled low. “Peggy is avoiding your wrath with the flu.”

  “Is that what she’s calling it?”

  “What went down?”

  “Lucy the Lawyer said all that shit off the record and I was just using it to sample a style.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh hey, you mentioned a Linda Remington last time you were here and I hadn’t run her stuff, but then I did. You want to know what’s funny?”

  “Sure,” Benson said, but he was pretty certain he was off the Schubert Murder and helping out the Love is Murder Social Club. It was like losing a giant group of friends with the break-up, too, and the agony of it hit him once again.

  “She’s pretty clean. Tidy little life. But she doesn’t live in Oregon anymore. No, she owns property in Colorado.”

  “Oh?” Benson asked to make conversation, but he was hardly interested in where Linda had gone.

  “Yeah. And curiously…a plane crashed somewhere real close to her property last week. Carrying one Robin Schubert.”

  Benson’s ears perked and he turned to Nolan, fully engaged.

  “Wait, the plane with Robin Schubert crashed on Linda Remington’s property?”

  “About a mile from her private property.”

  “You got an address?”

  “Why? You going to Colorado?” Nolan asked with a smirk and then when Benson didn’t answer right away, he shook his head. “Seriously?”

  “I’m sticking with this until it’s over,” he answered, and that he could promise. Even if Annie didn’t want his help, he could still offer his services until he had totally worn out his welcome.

  “I’ll send over the address,” he said.

  Benson nodded and took off—he was out of daylight, but if he was speedy through the mountains, he could be at the coast in eighty minutes. He hoped to find Annie willing to talk about Schubert one last time—a last ditch effort to get her to see his value.

  With his stereo blasting love songs, Benson followed Annie’s trail to the coast and landed at her door. The lights in her apartment were all ablaze and a few people roamed around. Carefully, Benson knocked.

  Gloria answered the door, her eyes red and a handkerchief clutched in her right hand.

  “Oh, Benson,” she cried and brought him in for a hug. “Who called you?”

  “No one,” he said and he scanned the apartment: there were the members of the club, but no Annie.

  “Where is she?” he asked, scooting his way into the apartment, looking in the kitchen, hoping he was wrong. “Is she here?”

  “Benson—” someone else said his name.

  He felt a pit in his stomach grow and he hated the way the women in the apartment stared at him with dueling anger and pity.

  “Maybe she wouldn’t want him here,” another person said, but Gloria shushed the commenter and he was grateful.

  “Here’s what we know,” Gloria said. “She left a date with Colby Jackson tonight to meet up with Vincent Applegate. Lucia Applegate’s brother. Through our sources, we learned that Vincent had connections to organized crime on the east coast. Looks like his sister was sold to these guys, brotherly of him, and she gets knocked up with the leader’s baby. And that’s when she decides to go into hiding. She went into witness protection to run away in exchange to topple the guy at the top….but at some point, she gets homesick and calls someone. A friend. Brother got ahold of that information…”

  “I get the picture,” Benson said. “So, the brother’s not a good guy.”

  Holly interjected from across the room. “Lucia never had a sister, so we don’t know who came asking about the boy on my end. There’s a possibility there’s more than one group of people fighting for the boy and his own testimony. But that’s conjecture. My guess is that the woman who claimed to be the sister is this friend. Maybe she’s out to get the boy before the brother.”

  “Popular kid.” Benson was more concerned with Annie. “Has anyone reported Annie missing?”

  Gloria and Holly exchanged a knowing look.

  “What?” he asked.

  “She’s not missing,” Gloria said, wiping her nose. “She got a text off about thirty minutes ago. There’s a huge storm coming in off the coast and she’s trapped at the lighthouse.”

  Benson didn’t know if he heard correctly. He stood up and shook his head, walking over to the window. “What? Did you say she was rapped at the lighthouse?”

  “No one can rescue her until the storm passes. She has to ride it out.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No. Not kidding.”

  “She’s alone at the lighthouse without a way off the rock?”

  “Don’t be an asshole and try anything heroic. She hates you right now and even the Coast Guard told us they wouldn’t try anything until morning.”

  Benson focused on the most important part of that sentence. He looked up at the speaker, Holly, and shook his head. “She hates me,” he repeated, not a question. He knew he’d have to face the music with them. “I didn’t mean for that piece of garbage to be published….”

  “Did you write it?” Gloria asked.

  “As an experiment,” he tried to answer, but he knew it sounded lame.

  “It hurt her,” someone else said and Benson hung his head.

  “I want a chance to tell her I’m sorry,” he said, wondering if she would even be in the mood to hear it after surviving a cold, wet, rainy night without food or electricity.

  “She might listen to you,” Holly said with a sad smile. “But she’s Annie. And she’s perfect. Maybe you don’t deserve her.”

  “That’s true,” Benson answered without hesitation. “I don’t deserve her. But I can spend every moment for the rest of my life trying to prove I’m worthy of one more chance. I’ve never met anyone like her and I don’t want to let her just literally leave me without a word.”

  “I’d let him stay,” someone advocated from the back.

  But it was a tough sell.

  Gloria made the executive decision. “You can stay. But everything we say better be off the fucking record.” She raised a finger and held it at Benson’s nose until he raised his hands in surrender, shying away from her powerful stance in his face.

  “I get it, I get it,” he said. And he settled back into a long night.

  She’d sent them a picture. Blurry and a bit too far to make out the details, but it seemed to be a letter of guardianship signed from Lucia Applegate or Missy Price. That much was clear—they were the same person.

  “Hey,” Benson said when he studied the photo—which had been downloading to Gloria’s phone for nearly three hours, “that reminds me. Linda Remington owns a giant plot of land in Colorado. Same place where Robin’s private plane went down.”

  Erin straightened up on the couch and nodded to Gloria who was forced to tip their hand.

  “We had our suspicions Robin wasn’t dead,” Gloria said. “It’s good to confirm them. You have an address for this place?”

  Erin stood and walked over, stretching her arms up in a yawn. “I have people that can be over there in thirty minutes if I call.” She rested her hands above her head and waited.

  “What are we wanting to find there?” Benson asked.

  “A missing kid?” Erin answered.

  Gloria made a small clucking noise with her tongue and she settled down the masses. “Benson?”

  “I think they’ve gone to great lengths to keep the kid hidden,” he said slowly, knowing that their desires for answers outweighed his opinion that they needed to back off. “This boy isn’t in trouble unless we bring trouble to him…” he said.

  The girls were quiet.

  Holly was the first to speak. “I can see that point of view.” She scratched at the side of her head and let out a small sigh. “We wanted to know who murdered Schubert and Price. We didn’t even know there was a kid involved when we started. Did we solve anything? Or are we netting zero on this one.�
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  “Annie’s still trapped at a lighthouse,” Gloria reminded everyone. “We going to wait until she’s back and can tell us what she found?”

  “Is she in danger?” Benson asked again, feeling as though he hadn’t received a straight answer before.

  No one wanted to tell him and he felt useless at their mercy. If it was a test, he hoped he was passing because it took every ounce of energy he had not to get in a boat or find his own helicopter and head to the lighthouse to help Annie. The woman didn’t need rescuing, but she may have needed a friendly face and he didn’t want her to hate him anymore.

  Maybe, maybe if she saw him and understood, then he could salvage what he’d lost. At the end of it all, he thought he deserved that much.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Annie didn’t know if anyone got the text messages she was sending up into the world, but she kept trying. She sat with the visitor notebook for Viking Burials in her lap, going through every entry looking for a Missy Price or Lucia Applegate. Finally, after nearly an hour and looking at every page twice, she saw it: A simple LA and then a double-digit number. 26.

  Standing, Annie tried not to let the sounds of the storm keep her from missing something important. She scanned the light over the urns and sure enough, they were numbered. Twenty-six was a small wooden box with a picture on the top of an elderly woman holding a cat. The woman’s name was carved into the top.

  “With apologies to Edna,” Annie said and tipped open the box. Ash and rock and bone and a Ziploc bag with paper fell out on to the ground. Holding the flashlight under her chin, Annie tried to recover as much of Edna as possible before checking out the plastic baggie.

  Leaving the crypt, Annie left the barracks and stood on the edge of the cement block.

  She’d half-assumed Josh would have sent a replacement pilot for her by now when he realized she was missing. But maybe it would take time; more time. Annie watched the waves roll around her and the birds flee the rock in protest of the wind. By the light of the moon, Annie held up the piece of paper and read it thoroughly. She rushed back to her phone and took a careful picture before tearing the piece of paper into small pieces and letting her hand open in the wind.